This invention relates to public switched telephone network (PSTN) to internet services and more particularly to PSTN-Internet notification (PIN) services.
Telephone calls and telephone call services that are well known within the PSTN are starting to be available on communication systems that use both the PSTN and the Internet network as their telephone call transport media.
xe2x80x9cCurrent telephone call services on the PSTN system and those available on the PSTN-Internet system are described in the articles: ITU-T Q.12 Recommendation Series, Geneva, 1995; I. Faynberg, L. R. Gabuzda, M. P. Kaplan, and N. J. Shah, xe2x80x9cThe Intelligent Network Standards and their Application to Servicesxe2x80x9d McGraw-Hill, 1996; S. Petrack, xe2x80x9cIP Access to PSTN Services: Basic Service Requirements, Definitions, and Architecturexe2x80x9d, Internet Draft; Handley, Schulzrinne, Schooler, and Rosenberg, xe2x80x9cSIP: Session Initiation Protocolxe2x80x9d, Internet Draft; xe2x80x9cProposal for Internet Call Waiting Service using SIP; L. Slutsman, xe2x80x9cAdvanced Internet Caller ID Delivery Servicexe2x80x9d Internet Draft; and J. Rosenberg, H. Schulzrinne, xe2x80x9cSIP For Presencexe2x80x9d, Internet Draft.xe2x80x9d
Those articles referred to as Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as xe2x80x9cwork in progress.xe2x80x9d Copies of the above mentioned articles as of Feb. 18, 1999 will be available to establish the state of the art. The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/l id-abstracts.txt
The problem of the telephone services referred to in the above articles is that they are just most rudimentary telephone services, while users and PSTN service providers and Internet service providers would like to provide the same telephone services on PSTN-Internet systems that are available on PSTN systems.
It is an object of this invention to provide advanced telephone services to PSTN-Internet system users.
It is another object of this invention to provide a method for enabling advanced PSTN-Internet services.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, the aforementioned object are achieved by providing a method for use with a communication system in which a set of PIN clients have subscribed to an incoming call notification event service having the subscription information saved in a database accessible to a service notification function unit (SNF) and a PIN server, comprising the steps of:
a. Calling party initiating a call that gets to a terminating switch (TS);
b. TS notifying a SNF entity of the system of this event and alerting Called Party in the normal manner of Called Party""s telephone will ring on the Called Party""s side;
c. SNF communicating to the PIN Gateway, passing the PIN Gateway the Calling Party""s number, the Called Party""s number, the time of day the call was received and other information related to the call, said communicating between the SNF and PIN Gateway occur using existing PSTN domain protocols;
d. PIN Gateway passing said information to the PIN Server using a PIN protocol.
e. PIN Server consulting the database to get the appropriate PIN Client""s IP address; and
f. PIN Server notifying the appropriate PIN Client of the Incoming Call; wherein communications between the PIN Server and PIN Clients use either PIN or some other relevant IP domain protocol.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the aforementioned objects are achieved by providing a method for use with a communication system in which a set of PIN clients have subscribed to a Voice Mail Arrival Event service having the subscription information saved in a database accessible to the SNF and the PIN server, comprising the steps of:
a. Calling party initiating a call that gets to the Terminating Switch (TS);
b. The TS notifying SNF entity of the system of this event and alerting Called Party in the normal manner of Called Party""s telephone will ring on the Called Party""s side and the call will be forwarded to a voice mail system;
c. SNF communicating to the PIN Gateway, passing the PIN Gateway the Calling Party""s number, the Called Party""s number, the time of day the call was received and other information related to the call, said communicating between the SNF and PIN Gateway occur using existing PSTN domain protocols;
d. PIN Gateway passing said information to the PIN Server using a PIN protocol.
e. PIN Server consulting the database to get the appropriate PIN Client""s IP address; and
f. PIN Server notifying the appropriate PIN Client of the Incoming Call; wherein communications between the PIN Server and PIN Clients use either PIN or some other relevant IP domain protocol.